Social Media, Social Engagement News & Guidance

Developers working on in stream payment apps be warned. Twitter will close off your service if you try to set up shop on their turf without proper authorization as the company has done with a startup called Ribbon.

When you think about how social media platforms have changed to embrace organized conversations, it’s interesting to note that until today, Twitter has been among the last to do so. Facebook has groups and pages. LinkedIn has groups and company pages. G+ has communities. But if you really wanted to have a discussion on Twitter, you had to organize it around a hashtag or follow a threaded discussion, which often left out some crucial parts of the conversation. Today, that changes, thanks to Nestivity.
 

I can’t count the number of times I’ve overheard brand representatives bragging about reaching the milestone of “ten thousands followers on Twitter!” Or a hundred thousand. Or even a million. Of course, these numbers are big, and at first glance they’re impressive. But counting followers is like counting beans: the real value comes from what you do with them.

Been hearing a bit about social media these days, eh? There's a reason it has been giving companies large and small such fits over the last four or so years, but it's still early days for social business. It's real power hasn't been unleashed just yet.

We all know that lots of videos are being watched online. But a new Digital Index report from Adobe provides a measure of how much. In the fourth quarter of 2012 alone, for instance, there were 11 times more video streams than all the movie tickets sold in the U.S. over the entire year. 

Four out of every ten customers would rather experience a trip to their Department of Motor Vehicles than contact customer care. With all due respect to your local DMV, that’s a sobering reflection of the state of customer service, but only one of many in a new survey sponsored by Aspect Software, a customer interaction management vendor. 

Got negative reviews? Think that you have them under control? Zendesk has released results from a recent study, which reveals the negative impact that the rise in social media and web review sites, like Yelp, have on a business' bottom line. 

The past few years have been good for community managers. Community managers have been able to transform themselves into company listeners, social enablers and company customer service liaisons. But the community manager has a growth problem -- in that there hasn’t been anything for the community manager to aspire to -- no corporate ladder to climb. Until now. Introducing the Community Director. 

Big whoop, there’s a "Facebook phone.” That was my first reaction to Mark Zuckerberg’s announcement last week.

In 2013, content marketers are putting more content in more places as their budgets increase, a Content Marketing Institute report found, and the companies who follow this pattern are following the best practices in the industry.

This month, we’re returning to our Facebook App of the Week series with a page design app: Decor Tab Creator.

By now, all businesses -- both large and small -- realize the importance of having a social strategy.

Social media data provider Gnip will begin offering clients access to several more public APIs of some of the most popular social streams like Instagram, bitly and Stack Overflow, among others.

Digital marketers will appreciate the Episerver 7.1 release because it includes multivariate testing and an enhanced Social Reach add on.

 After months of rumor, Facebook's smartphone is likely the one you already own, as Home opens up a new way to put social front and center on selected mobile devices.